The use of a compound turret having a rotary turret and a stationary turret mounted on a single housing in conjunction with machine tools such as lathes or the like is shown by Goto in U.S. Pat. No. 4,080,853. Further, the use of carriage systems for linearly varying the position of said turrets with respect to a work piece is disclosed by Williamson et al in U.S. Pat. No. 3,710,466, Kurimoto et al in U.S. Pat. No. 3,725,987 and Goto in U.S. Pat. No. 4,080,853. Prior to this invention, however, it has not been possible to vary the angular position that either turret of a compound turret forms with respect to a work piece. Thus, the functions that tooling mounted on the turrets could, perform were severely limited.
Prior drive systems used for indexing rotary and non-rotary turrets mounted on a single housing have been costly and ineffective. Such drive systems were exemplified by that employed by Goto in U.S. Pat. No. 4,080,853.
The use of a plurality of tools mounted on a single turret is disclosed by Goto in U.S. Pat. No. 4,080,853, Foll et al in U.S. Pat. No. 3,786,539 and in Japanese Pat. No. 56119302. This feature allows the operator to readily index another tool to perform a different machining function or to readily replace a dull tool. Prior to this invention, it has not been known to place a rotating and non-rotating dead tool on a single turret plate.